Descartes' Bones
Title: Descartes’ BonesAuthor: Russell Shorto
Publisher: DOUBLEDAY
Number of pages: 257
Purchased: 12/2008
Begun: 12/20/2008
Finished: 6/6/2009 Rating: ***
Review: This book, published in October 2008, provides (in the words of its subtitle) “A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason.”
Russell begins with an overview of “The man who Died” (chapter 1). Descartes lived in a an age of many scientific discoveries. However, he perceived them to be without any unifying foundation. The crises he experienced was a loss of meaning, and he began a quest for truth, for something to believe in. He was resolved to slash every idea until he came to a proposition that was impossible to deny. Aristotle, Aquinas, Plato, the Hebrew prophets and the Apostle Paul were all regulated to the same dustbin. Even his own senses could not be trusted since senses can deceive. There might be a tree in front of me, or I might be just dreaming that that is a tree.
“At the end of this remorseless reduction there is only one thing that remains, one proposition that can’t be denied, one sound, as it were, in the universe, like the lonely ticking of a clock. It is the sound of the thinker’s own thoughts. For can I doubt that thoughts are occurring right now, including this one? No: it’s not logically possible.” Hence the conclusion: “Cogito, ergo sum,” or, “Je pense, donc je suis,” or “I think, therefore I am.” This was way more than a slogan. As Shorto explains, it declared that “the mind and its ‘good sense’--that is to say, human reason--are the only basis for judging whether a thing is true…. Human reason supplanted received wisdom. Once Descartes had established the base, he and others could rebuild the edifice of knowledge. But it would be different from what it had been. Everything would be different.”
Following the overview of chapter one, the majority of Shorto’s book is devoted to a description of the peregrinations of the French philosopher’s bones down through the centuries following his death in 1650. The story is fascinating, not only because the skull was separated from the bones sixteen years after Descartes’ death (and followed a completely different trajectory through different countries), but because of the recurring connection that Descartes’ bones had with the developing ideas and events of the “modern” world that Descartes’ philosophy had produced. Thus, in an odd way, Descartes’ skull and the ideas which emerged from it keep intersecting.
This is a fascinating read, because it is on the one hand a non-fiction historical detective story, and on the other hand a philosophical analysis of modernity. Descartes introduced “modernism” which eventually gave way to “postmodernism.” The postmodern world ended, according to Shorto, on September 11, 2001. He borrows from the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas the term postsecular to describe the next stage in the evolution of Western society. This is a stage in which the two radical extremes--radical secularists (such as Christopher Hitchens and other “radical Enlightenment” warriors) and the “theological camp” (people “at the fringes of Western society who [refuse] to go along with the basic ideals inherited from the enlightenment,” who reject homosexuality, etc., and who value supposed divine revelation over human doubt)--are brought into the “moderate Enlightenment camp” in which it is recognized that “scientific and religious worldviews aren’t truly inconsistent but that perceived conflicts have to be sorted out.” (He explains how the American Revolution was the result of “moderate Enlightenment” thinking, and the French Revolution the result of “radical Enlightenment” thinking.)
Our understanding of the relationship of faith to reason and reason to faith have titanic implications to our own personal worldview. Understanding how these two have related throughout western history helps us better relate to the millions around us who, indifferent as they may be to the doubts concerning the authenticity of Descartes’ skull, are nonetheless the products of the doubts that skull produced.
Here a video of the author explaining the thesis of his book, at the book’s official website.
Publisher: DOUBLEDAY
Number of pages: 257
Purchased: 12/2008
Begun: 12/20/2008
Finished: 6/6/2009 Rating: ***
Review: This book, published in October 2008, provides (in the words of its subtitle) “A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason.”
Russell begins with an overview of “The man who Died” (chapter 1). Descartes lived in a an age of many scientific discoveries. However, he perceived them to be without any unifying foundation. The crises he experienced was a loss of meaning, and he began a quest for truth, for something to believe in. He was resolved to slash every idea until he came to a proposition that was impossible to deny. Aristotle, Aquinas, Plato, the Hebrew prophets and the Apostle Paul were all regulated to the same dustbin. Even his own senses could not be trusted since senses can deceive. There might be a tree in front of me, or I might be just dreaming that that is a tree.
“At the end of this remorseless reduction there is only one thing that remains, one proposition that can’t be denied, one sound, as it were, in the universe, like the lonely ticking of a clock. It is the sound of the thinker’s own thoughts. For can I doubt that thoughts are occurring right now, including this one? No: it’s not logically possible.” Hence the conclusion: “Cogito, ergo sum,” or, “Je pense, donc je suis,” or “I think, therefore I am.” This was way more than a slogan. As Shorto explains, it declared that “the mind and its ‘good sense’--that is to say, human reason--are the only basis for judging whether a thing is true…. Human reason supplanted received wisdom. Once Descartes had established the base, he and others could rebuild the edifice of knowledge. But it would be different from what it had been. Everything would be different.”
Following the overview of chapter one, the majority of Shorto’s book is devoted to a description of the peregrinations of the French philosopher’s bones down through the centuries following his death in 1650. The story is fascinating, not only because the skull was separated from the bones sixteen years after Descartes’ death (and followed a completely different trajectory through different countries), but because of the recurring connection that Descartes’ bones had with the developing ideas and events of the “modern” world that Descartes’ philosophy had produced. Thus, in an odd way, Descartes’ skull and the ideas which emerged from it keep intersecting.
This is a fascinating read, because it is on the one hand a non-fiction historical detective story, and on the other hand a philosophical analysis of modernity. Descartes introduced “modernism” which eventually gave way to “postmodernism.” The postmodern world ended, according to Shorto, on September 11, 2001. He borrows from the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas the term postsecular to describe the next stage in the evolution of Western society. This is a stage in which the two radical extremes--radical secularists (such as Christopher Hitchens and other “radical Enlightenment” warriors) and the “theological camp” (people “at the fringes of Western society who [refuse] to go along with the basic ideals inherited from the enlightenment,” who reject homosexuality, etc., and who value supposed divine revelation over human doubt)--are brought into the “moderate Enlightenment camp” in which it is recognized that “scientific and religious worldviews aren’t truly inconsistent but that perceived conflicts have to be sorted out.” (He explains how the American Revolution was the result of “moderate Enlightenment” thinking, and the French Revolution the result of “radical Enlightenment” thinking.)
Our understanding of the relationship of faith to reason and reason to faith have titanic implications to our own personal worldview. Understanding how these two have related throughout western history helps us better relate to the millions around us who, indifferent as they may be to the doubts concerning the authenticity of Descartes’ skull, are nonetheless the products of the doubts that skull produced.
Here a video of the author explaining the thesis of his book, at the book’s official website.
Labels: Book contest, book reviews, Tim, Tim reading
posted by TimBix | 7:55 PM
4 Comments:
Peregrinations. Nice word. Good review too, but the word is worth the whole thing.
I'm interested in the "post-modernism is over" thing. I said that once on my blog and then couldn't defend it because it was more of just a hunch. You basically just stated it as well. Did Shorto define what he meant?
Also, I heard Os Guiness say in a university lecture that was recorded that post-modernism is already dead in France.
Great review, Tim. I'm also wondering what Shorto meant by his post-modernism remark. What is the rationale in Shorto's choosing of 9/11 to mark the extinction of post-modernism and the genesis of post-secularism? Just curious.
Shorto says, "Postmodernism replaced progress with skepticism.
"Then a new millennium--to be precise, September 11, 2001--brought a sudden turn of thinking, and a reappraisal. The threat from some quarters has seemed bewilderingly ancient, as if a dinosaur had suddenly reared up from its prehistoric slumber" (speaking of religious fundamentalism).
Whereas the western world has tended to believe that other societies would inevitably follow a secular path, they are forced to acknowledge that "now throughout the world you find religious revivals. We're learning that more modern societies don't necessarily become more secular."
This, says Shorto, "has coincided with a desire to look back at our past to remind ourselves of what we are. I think that is good and necessary; I agree, for example, with the German scholar Heinz Schlaffer when he says that 'Western culture is also fundamentalist: Its fundament is called the Enlightenment' and that' the paradox is that this fundament is the basis for our present society, but also half forgotten by it.'"
We are now in this "postsecular" stage which involves (to quote Habermas) "the assimilation and reflexive transformation of both religious and secular mentalities."
Those trying to deal with this new confrontation of the religious and secular (or faith and reason) fall into three camps:
1. The Radical Enlightenment Camp which Shorto calls "flawed" because
a) it thinks too highly of reason ("The history of madernity...makes plain that trying to follow reason is not the same as being right.") and
b) radical secularism takes a too narrow construction of reality.
2. The Theological Camp which Shorto believes is flawed because (to quote Hirsi Ali) "Faith assumes infallibility and that is the danger."
3. The Moderate Enlightenment Camp.
Shorto: "If there is a solution to the dilemma of modernity, surely it lies in bringing the two wings into the middle, which is where most people live.... Such transformation would presumably require convincing or teaching or cajoling or arm-twisting the radical partisans--the theologians and the radical secularists--into widening their picture of reality, getting both to acknowledge that they don't have a lock on truth, that the world is too wild for our strategies to contain it."
Hope that helps.
Thanks for the enlightenment, Tim (no pun intended, of course).
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